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The Devil wears… baggy jeans and a plain white t-shirt?
That’s the question I’m asking after the Met Gala unveiled its paltry new replacement theme for 2027. The Metropolitan Museum of Art was forced to act fast after mounting public pressure led them to pull the John Galliano-themed exhibit and gala over his history of antisemitic and racist remarks. They went to the drawing board and, clearly, decided to play it safe. Extremely safe.
Announced quietly today, the Met will dedicate its next blockbuster fashion exhibit to the basics we all have in our wardrobes. Blue jeans. Puffer coats. White T-shirts (maybe not the ones with the stubborn food stains, though). They’re calling it “extraOrdinary: Fashion and the Poetics of the Everyday,” which will reimagine staple items through the lens of high fashion. The nine-month exhibit will inform the theme for the accompanying red carpet gala, one of the most decadent nights on the fashion calendar, happening in May.
The event will invite celebrity guests to interpret the meaning of going back to basics. I’m imagining two variations on the theme: a modern-day take on Carolyn Bessette Kennedy’s minimalist Nineties style, developed while she was working as a Calvin Klein employee, or everyone will turn up in badazzled, oversized puffer coats, like Gigi Hadid at the 2022 gala, who wore a crimson Versace down jacket with a cascading train.
According to the Met, the exhibit will include 200 to 230 pieces, and a portion of it will come from the museum’s own collection, with the rest donated or lent by fashion brands. The New York Times reports that items on display will include Brooke Shields’s Calvin Klein jeans from the famous 1980 advert, Charles James’s 1930s couture puffer coat and Matthieu Blazy’s trompe l’oeil jeans for Bottega Veneta, which are made from leather.
If you ask me, this theme is artfully mundane at best, and boring at worst. As fashion spectators, the Met Gala red carpet is where we look to gasp, cast criticism and collectively “oooo-ahhh” at the stunning looks (albeit from the comfort of our homes). I don’t know how excited I can get over a pair of jeans, even if they were worn in a famous commercial.
I guess the Met would play it safe, because, well, the 2027 event had an awkward false start. It had initially announced that the exhibition and accompanying gala would be titled “John Galliano: Horizon,” recognizing the work of the British designer, who is widely considered to be one of the most powerful — and polarizing — tastemakers of the past four decades. They had said the exhibition would take into account the “full arc” of the artist’s career (warts and all), but it was hard to overlook Galliano’s past of antisemitic comments. In the end, influential donors worried that the exhibit might be perceived as celebrating Galliano, and it seemed particularly problematic that it fell on Israel’s Holocaust Remembrance Day. Public pressure mounted, and the whole thing was scrapped in an unprecedented move in August.
It is wildly perplexing why the Met decided to honor Galliano in the first place. He was briefly exiled from the industry after being convicted of an antisemitic hate crime by a French court in 2011. But he has remained friends with Anna Wintour – Vogue’s global editorial director and the chief organizer of the gala – for many years, and she is one of his most ardent supporters. When stepping back from the gala, Galliano said in a statement, “I also recognize and respect that an exhibition honoring my work would be painful for some.”
The whole thing was mortifying. And it shows – the fact that the museum discreetly pushed out the announcement Thursday morning instead of holding its usual star-studded news conference is one indication. The details in the release were scant, presumably because it is still a work in progress. So far, we do not know what celebrities will act as co-chairs (a prestigious role occupied by Beyoncé, Venus Williams and Nicole Kidman last year). We do know that Instagram’s parent company Meta and Moncler, the outerwear brand known for its luxury down jackets, will be sponsors. So, yes, puffer coats all around!
I do not doubt that the Met exhibition itself will be interesting for fashion fans (last year’s Costume Art exhibit was genuinely stunning), but the gala itself may be a letdown. For years, the fashion event has been falling out of favor, with some simply citing that it has become tired, while others have called out the tone-deafness of such a decadent event in the political and economic times that we live in. Matters weren’t helped when billionaire Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and his wife Lauren Sanchez were lead financial sponsors for the 2026 event, which led to celebrity boycotts and heavy criticism.
The celebration of the mundane feels a bit like a metaphor for where things might go… downhill. Sure, I like to appreciate a good pair of jeans as much as the next guy. Finding the perfect white T-shirt is practically my sport. Simple clothes carry stories within them. Yet celebrating the things we encounter every day at the biggest fashion party of the year doesn’t fill me with excitement, because if I wanted to see Hailey Bieber in a pair of capri pants and a white tank top, I could just open Instagram.
Better yet, let’s just make this the pajama gala. Forget the Moncler puffer jackets. I’ll bring my onesie!
